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Friday, June 6, 2014

My Foolish Visit

The first
Friday of every month, the HR team at Motley Fool leads an office culture
tour. Kay Noll at ASCO had taken it and found it interesting and thought
provoking, so I went today along with the HR directors at five other
associations. Sam Cicotello, Chief Rabble Rouser of the Highest
Order, led our tour
with admirable energy and foolish enthusiasm. I was just going to take it all
in, but the geek in me won out and I took notes, so I figured I may as well
share them.

I know
I’m stating the obvious here, but for the record -- this is my interpretation
of what I heard and saw. Like everyone else, it was filtered through my own
experiences. I’m sure I misunderstood some things or read too much into them. I
just hope Sam won’t want to slap me if she reads this.

The
atmosphere was one of controlled chaos. All the furniture was on wheels and there
was stuff everywhere -- a giant blow up shark, a pit of balls, walking desks,
bike desks, giant tv screens and computer screens, white boards, Legos, books and
fans. They evidently move and arrange it all depending on what they’re working
on and whom they’re working with. They described their organizational chart
like it’s just as fluid. As we walked around, we saw small groups of people
collaborating everywhere. The Fools were welcoming and friendly and didn’t seem
to mind us snapping pictures and asking questions.

Because
there are essentially no rules, their supervisors have to be very skilled at
giving feedback and having what most of us would perceive as difficult
conversations. I had hoped to gain some insight into how they achieve this. They
said they focus on getting people that demonstrate these skills into supervisory
roles more than training for them, but they clearly have a lot of support. They
have between 10 and 20 staff doing HR work for a staff of 300. By comparison,
we have 4 people to support 265.

They said
they hire for cultural fit, demonstrated passion and skill in that order and
reported their average age as 35. I should have asked how diverse the staff is
because I walked away thinking I’d seen mostly 20 something year old, Caucasian
men (at least one of whom was barefoot.)

Here’s more
of what impressed me.

The “No Policy” Policy

The crew
at Motley Fool finds fun ways to communicate what’s important without relying
on rules and policies. I honestly wouldn’t shed a tear if our employee handbook
was burned, so this impressed the heck out of me.

Pantsing
wall (i.e., caught with your pants down.) If an employee leaves their computer
left unlocked (FTC compliance issue), the finder sends an all staff email
that’s embarrassing. In other companies you might be written-up or even fired
for this, but Motley Fool finds the public humiliation effective.

Fools errand. They pull a name out of a hat and the person selected takes two
weeks off and is given some cash. They have no vacation policy and people can take
whatever time they want, but this practice forces people to have contingency
plans and back-ups. Obviously, an employee could be called away at any time and
they don’t want to be left in a pickle.

Take what
you need. People can take as much time off as they like. If it’s perceived as a
problem, they have a conversation about how they’re letting their team down,
not pulling their weight etc. This is how they describe it on their website:

The Fool’s
vacation/sick policy is pretty straightforward: take what you need. That’s
right, as long as you get your work done and consult with your supervisor in
advance (if you’re going to be sick, we’d like to know in advance, but we
understand it doesn’t always work that way…unfortunately…), you may take any
reasonable amount of time off. With pay, of course. Huh? Flexible paid time off? What’s the
catch? Well… nothing, actually. Fools treat themselves, their company and their
co-workers with fairness and respect, so you will not abuse such a wonderfully
Foolish benefit.

Performance Management – Measure everything and compete to win.

Key
metrics include:

Employee turnover (wanted ~2% /
unwanted 2%

Revenue per employee

Candidates per opening

Happiness score

Employee engagement

Jobs filled internally

At Motley
Fool, they focus or their high performers. They suggested asking these
questions: Who gets more feedback at your organization – high or low
performers? Where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? Can
you remove the low performers?

Every six
months each employee picks up to 10 people to get 360 feedback from. They are
trying to move away from anonymous feedback and toward face-to-face. It’s not
shared with them by a manager or anyone on their team. It’s delivered by what
sounded like a group of trained volunteers and used for development purposes only.

Performance management reviews are different every time. They use a 16 box performance vs
potential grid. (See a traditional 9 box description
from SHRM.) They don't force rank. Three times per year the leadership team
discusses employees and where they are on the grid. They said approximately 10%
of their staff are in the lowest quartile of the 16 quadrants at any point in
time. They improve or they are put on a path to success somewhere else.

They have
what I’d call a “crossroads conversation” with those low potential/low
performing folks and offer to give them some severance in lieu of putting them
on a performance improvement plan. This allows them to spend more of their time
investing in helping their top performers excel. And, they believe they’re
ruining people’s lives if they allow them to flounder. (BTW, I agree.)

If
managers don't give good feedback, they take away supervisory responsibility. They
want to play to people’s strengths, so they try to create multiple career paths
to advance – some that don’t require supervision. Management isn’t the only way
up at Motley Fool.

The Space

Like I
said, the atmosphere was one of controlled chaos and there were lots of options
for people to chose from to do their work. I saw treadmill desks, bike desks
and standing desks. I didn’t see anyone using the bike desk or treadmill desk,
but lots of people were using the standing desks. I’ve been looking for an
adjustable, standing desk option for ASHA, so I honed right in on this. They
use the Varidesk.com ($275-$350). We saw
a quiet work room, a mommy room, a massage room, a reading/nap room and a cool
game room. There was comfortable seating scattered around throughout the
office. Oh, and how could I forget to mention this, there are no offices with
walls. It’s all open space.

I really
liked the rolling white boards they had throughout the office (pictured above.) I could see us
using those at ASHA. They could replace some of the flip charts I tend to drag
around and become a sort of cubicle door for folks that want to work
uninterrupted for a while.

Values and People Practices

Their
advice about culture -- be intentional and model it from the top. Motley Fool's Core Values -- Be Foolish and...

How frequently do you reference
them? Are they part of your daily vocabulary/lexicon?

They have
pictures of every staff member on a wall across from their board room to serve
as a reminder that the board is making real decisions that effect real people.
This prompted me to think about collecting pictures of our members with brief
bios and printing them on cards. We could give one to each staff member to
remind us who we’re working for.

Twice a year, they do
an engagement survey. They’re using an app called Culture Amp which I plan to check out. They
said they ask a lot of Gallup questions, but they do it themselves.

Sam suggested thinking about what you want to fight and what you would be better
off embracing. For example, they decided to embrace March Madness. They offer a
bracketology class and everyone fills out their brackets, then they watch the
games together.

They
seemed to have a few folks to facilitate learning on their people team. They
mentioned just in time learning, but said they had a curriculum built for onboarding.
They respond to requests and rely on internal resources as much as possible.
They look for someone outside if they don’t have expertise in house. They
mentioned looking at their high performing mangers to key in on what they do
well, so they can figure out how to pass it down.

The HR documentation
type folks, which they described as compliance and benefits (Totally not how I
would define benefits, but I understand.) report to finance not to the people
team. Training, compensation, performance management, and recruiting folks are on
the people team.

They
value staff being in their physical environment, but 15% of their staff work
remotely. They have lots of flexibility, but no set telework schedules. They
said they don't hire people to work remotely, but they have made arrangements
to keep some high performers. Remote workers cannot have any direct reports.

I didn’t
learn much about how they compensate people. They mentioned a profit sharing
type plan and being able to buy and sell shares. They also mentioned a bonus
program with variable tiers (e.g., 5% and 10%), but said they all meet or miss
the eligibility requirement together. They want people who invest and understand
the ups and downs their customers feel, so they give all new employees $1,000
in their investment account.

They said they want Fools for life and they want it to be a long life. They employ a full time wellness person. Generally, if Motley Fool pays for it, it should be healthy, but I think I saw a cake. I liked their well-stocked kitchen area. I’d be totally into an unlimited supply of Fage plain Greek yogurt.

So, there
you have it in probably my longest blog post ever. This probably goes without
saying at this point, but I highly recommend taking the tour. Thanks to Kay for recommending it and thanks to my LAHRF